Matthew Schownir is a doctoral candidate in Modern European History at Purdue University, where he also received his master's degree in 2013. He also is a proud graduate of Huntington University, where he earned his bachelor's degree in history in 2009.

Schownir's dissertation examines the identity politics of Irish Catholic immigrant communities in the 19th-century British Empire. His broader research interests include the history of European imperialism, British and Irish diaspora and cultural studies, American legal history, and the history of violence and identity.

He has published a chapter in Gabriel Doherty's edited volume The Home Rule Crisis: 1912-14 (Mercier Press, 2014) and has a forthcoming article for the Borders in Globalization project in 2016. Schownir was also a fellow for the inaugural Humanities Without Walls pre-doctoral workshop in Chicago in 2015.